Singapore Media Landscape Highlights 2019: Prioritizing Audience Engagement and Multimedia Content
Despite Singapore’s relatively small population of around 5.8 million, it is a multilingual global city that hosts the regional headquarters of Reuters, CNBC Asia and the Dow Jones Group. Singapore media is also being disrupted digitally with the average daily circulation of print publications in English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil (the four official languages of Singapore) falling a stunning 52.9 percent from 2011 to 2018.
Digital news readership [1] grew 3.1 percent year-on-year (YoY), but not all of these newsreaders visit the digital pages of the government-linked media conglomerates, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and Mediacorp. Instead, as our media interviewees will highlight later, readers may opt for digital media outlets that specialize in a more distinctive brand of news, often driven by detailed insights about reader demographics and preferences.
One such example is AsiaOne, a PR Newswire content partner and content aggregation portal jointly owned by mm2 Asia and SPH. Since 2018, AsiaOne pivoted to original lifestyle and entertainment content through video-based formats, posting a rise in average monthly unique visitors of 108 percent or 1.2 million from June 2018 to June 2019. According to Comscore, AsiaOne is now the fourth-most read website in Singapore.
Marco Sparmberg, the director of digital media at AsiaOne, shares how AsiaOne stands out, “Our coverage of (the newly-opened) Jewel Changi Airport demonstrates this approach as we developed a story under the #Joeyjios series – an original series where readers follow the adventures of our reporter, Joey Lee,” explains Sparmberg. “Not only does this help to sustain readership following, but an original series also allows us to curate consistent streams of content across multiple channels.”
Leveraging multimedia content to engage audiences
Businesses, like the media, are prioritizing multi-channel audience engagement in their campaigns. Apart from following up with multimedia content after an event, brands can leverage similar campaigns to engage and attract target audiences before the event.
For example, Manulife Singapore launched “The Manulife Vault Game” on 4 October 2019 with a top prize of $250,000, targeting young people by inviting them to play a game involving unlocking a vault and accumulation of virtual currency. On 9 November, the top 32 players from this month-long game will be invited to compete in the playoffs at Jewel Changi Airport.
To appeal to young people, Manulife adopted a multimedia-rich communications strategy, starting with a multimedia news release that features a short video, screenshots of the gameplay and images featuring game-specific hashtags, e.g. #dreamretirement.
This short “optimized for engagement” video shows the unlocking of a vault to unveil the top prize on offer. And the results speak for themselves, with over 100,000 views on YouTube within twenty days and industry media, such as Insurance Business Asia, covering this news.
In our opinion, this campaign engages, entertains and educates its target audience through “snackable”, easy-to-consume multimedia content distributed through multiple channels.
Voices from the Singapore Media
To provide additional viewpoints for PR professionals to consider, we invited two Singaporean journalists (Shawn Lim and Zed B.W, a journalist from The Drum and editor/founder from JustSaying.Asia) to discuss their views on how PR practitioners can navigate the media landscape in Singapore.
- Please briefly introduce yourself and your publication.
Shawn:
I am a reporter for The Drum where I cover the Asia Pacific region, based in Singapore.
The Drum is a global organization that provides insights on all things digital, creative, advertising and media-related via its website and magazine. We provide award shows, live events, complete content marketing solutions, video production, research, peer-to-peer learning networks, and supplier finder services.
We have offices in Glasgow, London, New York, and Singapore.
Zed:
I am the editor and founder of JustSaying.Asia. JustSaying.Asia was initially launched as JustSaying.SG in 2013. It was meant as a platform to introduce and educate passionate individuals about the media industry.
In 2014, we rebranded to JustSaying.Asia, as we realized that we were getting consistent traffic from Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and even Australia and the U.S.
Working in the Corporate Communications and PR industry for more than a decade, it was clear that the way we (as PR Professionals) engage with the media needed to change and evolve – especially with the rise of blogging, social media and influencers.
I knew that there were many people out there that might not have the ‘paper qualifications’ but had a keen interest in writing and were very passionate about their hobbies. These passionate individuals subsequently made the JustSaying.Asia editorial team.
Everyone covers an aspect of the beat that they are incredibly passionate about as a consumer first, and a writer second. For example, food and restaurant reviews are divided into subcategories by types of cuisine (Italian, French, Vietnamese, Thai, etc). Gaming is broken down into categories such as FPS, MOBA, Strategy, Sports, Simulation, RPG, etc.
Shawn:
The publication has emerged in recent times as one of the most interesting sites for stories.
Their long-form pieces on heartland topics with ridiculous titles like “The Most Ridiculous Designs We Found In Our Heartland Clothing Shops”, or my favourite “Diary Of A Man Forced By His Boss To Visit The New Funan Mall” have given readers an alternative to local current affairs news on SPH and Mediacorp.
It is trying out podcasting with Storytel, where it puts articles on the platform as audiobooks, allowing users to listen to its stories instead.
There has not been a proper tabloid rival to The New Paper since it became a free-sheet, but Mothership has since filled that gap. While other alternative news outlets tend to have a critical approach to government policies, Mothership has taken a different approach with its tabloid-ish approach on news and current affairs.
Its video series like “Mothership Hits the Streets” appeal to the man on the street, and its government-friendly approach means it has attracted brands, and even the government to produce branded content, via editorials and videos.
Zed:
Digital media has the ability to provide data-driven insights for advertising campaigns that other forms of media might not have access to. Through the data that we have, we are able to curate our content to fit our readership’s specific demographics – age, location, interests.
Over the last six years, the data that we’ve collected has helped to influence the design and structure of the site, while highlighting our value proposition to clients.
By understanding how our readers moved across the site, we went from 1.2 page views per unique individual to 3.6 on average over the last year. It has also drastically helped us with our bounce rates – at about 9% per month, this is far lower than industry standards.
Shawn:
We built our video production capabilities eight years ago and have been producing videos editorially and commercially ever since.
As part of our branded content strategy, we produce videos for our clients at our own and global events like Cannes Lions, Advertising Week, DMEXCO and CES as part of their sponsorship package for the events we hold during these events.
For editorial videos, we are continually producing documentaries and series on eSports, creativity and advertising.
More recently, we started doing a live show call “The Drum Show” where we invite guests on the show to chat about the latest news in the industry and trending topics. We also host live shows on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Zed:
We receive tons of invites to pressers and are totally swamped. Clear and less “mysterious” subject lines are likely to get our attention faster.
The quicker we can get essential information from your invite (what, why, time and place) the better.
Zed:
(I look for) Real information about the product/ project/ initiative you’re pitching. How is it unique or compare to others that have come before?
However, avoid taking it up with superfluous adjectives about how amazing, fantastic, tremendous the product is. Some are fine, but some press releases we get just go way overboard.
Tell me why, back it up with data/facts and let us decide how amazing it is.
Keen to leverage video content as part of your communications strategy? Get in touch with us to learn more about PR Newswire’s Video News Release product.
[1] Nielsen’s Singapore Media Index Report 2018
Junxun Tan 